


Hardest Hue

by micehell



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Drama, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-24
Updated: 2005-08-24
Packaged: 2017-11-12 04:13:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/486557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/micehell/pseuds/micehell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Paradise found and lost again.  Vague spoilers for S2 and a blink and you'll miss it bit of pre-slash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hardest Hue

**Author's Note:**

> The title's an allusion to Robert Frost's _Nothing Gold Can Stay_ and John's quote is from Sophocles' _Electra_

"I think we should name it."

Rodney, for once, had been quiet, their casual pace making it easy for him to take in a beauty that owed everything to science and nothing to it; warm sun, blue sky, verdant landscape spotted with flowers that seemed to run the full spectrum of color, and that, miracle of miracles, weren't giving Rodney an allergic reaction.

Quiet and nature being things Rodney only enjoyed in very moderate amounts, he turned his view to Sheppard, and answered, "It has a name, Colonel. It's PXP-147."

The snark in his voice just earned him a lazy grin. "And a fine name that is, McKay. For a computer file. But a Garden of Eden like this needs a real name."

There was a pause, the ghost of bad suggestions that would never come again hanging in the air, and the grin slipped.

Wanting the lazy grin back, liking the measurable, Rodney broke free of the pull of Sheppard's gravity, moving further into the sickeningly beautiful vista.

"You could always call it, oh, I don't know, what the people who actually live here call it."

Sheppard was smiling again, and with that distinct air of being on the inside of a joke that Rodney couldn't even see. "Yeah, well, call me strange, but I like my names to have vowels in them."

Rodney would have replied, something so devastatingly witty that the colonel's overly large ego would have been flattened beyond repair, but they'd come to a fork in the almost-a-trail they'd been following.

The colonel studied the area intently, squatting to check the ground in each direction before choosing to go left. "This way."

It was a good act... for someone who'd never been out exploring with Sheppard before. Rodney wasn't fooled in the least. "If the choice is going to be random, why even pretend to consider it?"

Sheppard laughed, almost stumbling when he looked back at Rodney with a smirk on his face. "Because it irritates you, of course."

"So that's why you chose left the last two times before that, too."

"No, I chose left then because it was prettier."

He could almost believe it. Sheppard would make decisions based on something like that, but Rodney already knew the real reason. "By which you mean that taking all lefts is your only chance in hell of being able to find the way back without calling Teyla to come and find us."

::::::::::

It wasn't as if they had a destination, or anything better to do than sightsee. But even Rodney had balked at sitting in the 'jumper for hours as they waited for Teyla and Dex to return.

Their trading mission had descended into a coffee klatch, all the business details taken care of, only social niceties left to be observed. Rodney's impatience over the waste of his precious time had been muted somewhat by the beauty of PXP-147, but not enough that he felt like drinking tea while Teyla and her new friends talked.

He'd sacrificed what had felt like endless days of his life to the cause of his mother's social standing. Once he'd been free, he'd promised himself that he would never waste another minute in useless social interaction ever again.

Looking at Sheppard, Rodney wondered why he hadn't chosen to go with Teyla, wondered, once again, what had formed and informed the man. Sheppard seemed to live so close to the surface of his skin, and yet, after more than a year of friendship, Rodney still felt there were too many things he was missing.

"My mother used to make me attend her cocktail parties. Endless streams of her friends... well, people she wanted to impress. I always had to go, so that I could paraded around to perform tricks for the amazement of everyone. Never mind that I was bored out of my skull."

Sheppard looked back at him for a moment, curiosity plain on his face, but he didn't question this apparent non sequitur. "Sounds like a real fun fest there. Except not so much."

"So did your mother drag you to her parties? Make you drink tea with maiden aunts or anything?"

"Something like that." Voice wistful, nostalgic even, but still not telling a thing.

Rodney didn't want to think about why he cared, or why that wistful tone made him restless. Far better to think about the way that Dex had opted to go with Teyla, trailing behind her like a puppy. If James Dean were playing the puppy, anyway.

In one of those strange moments when Sheppard seemed to have access to Rodney's thoughts, he said, "Teyla might as well have Ronon on a leash, the way he follows her around."

"Maybe that part comes after she's got him housebroken." And Rodney, well aware of the irony, followed the colonel further into the lush growth around them.

::::::::::

They moved from copse to clearing, taking another left, which made Rodney grimace, but he wasn't arguing with anything that got them back to the 'jumper without calling for help.

Rodney was momentarily distracted by trying to imagine who had first decided that copse sounded like a good word for a bunch of trees, but he was brought up short when Sheppard suddenly stopped, making Rodney bump into him, face snapping forward to connect with the colonel's head.

"Ow! You couldn't have signaled first?"

Sheppard didn't answer, just pointing to some trees in front of them.

Which looked just like trees.

"Yes, very pretty. But I think I might have broken my nose against your hard head."

"Geez, McKay, do you ever actually look before you start talking. Look between the trees."

Rubbing his nose, wanting Sheppard to at least fake some sympathy, he looked between the trees. And saw the web.

It was translucent, blending into the colors around it, and it was huge. Almost four meters high and another three across, and Rodney didn't want to see what had made it.

Sudden movement, light reflecting from something black, oily, and he didn't have any choice in the matter. Six thin, multi-jointed limbs stuck out from either side of its lumpy body, more than an Earth spider, but looking a lot like one all the same. Except for being a hell of a lot larger; probably a meter across with the leg-span, the large head and abdomen taking up almost half of that.

Rodney was in two minds over what to do. One part wanted to run screaming back to the ship, and the other part wanted to stand there and scream, because now he was afraid to go back through the woods, just in case they came across another one of the spider things. Or their larger cousins.

But Sheppard, who really should have been phobic as hell, considering, was staring at it in fascination, though he was fingering the small scar on his neck that not even Carson's skills had been able to prevent. "Damn, that is one big bug. If we named it Charlotte, we'd be naming it after the city rather than the book."

The comment was so blatantly stupid that Rodney forgot about screaming. "Are you crazy? Are you channeling Ford? That thing is obviously Shelob, not Charlotte."

And where he'd barely flinched from the spider, calling the specter of Ford into the conversation caused Sheppard to jerk back, as if Rodney had hit him.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

Sheppard gave him another of the lopsided grins. "No. Stupid not to talk about him."

It was, but sometimes stupidity was the only way to protect yourself, much as Rodney hated to admit it. He'd practiced willful ignorance a few times himself, like choosing to ignore why he'd agreed to go exploring with Colonel Calamity in the first place.

Sheppard laughed suddenly, real amusement on his face. "You know Ford would have really wanted to call this place Eden. Both obvious and lame, that would have been his first choice. Especially now that we've found the serpent in the garden."

Sighing, again willfully ignoring what the laugh did to him, Rodney shook his head. "There's nothing snake-like about that thing."

"The worm in the apple."

"Don't make me hurt you."

Sheppard gave him a considering look, and Rodney prepared himself for either another lousy metaphor or an attack. "The butterflies."

"Ok. That one didn't even make sense."

But the colonel just grabbed Rodney's chin, turning his face back towards the spider, where a large group of butterflies was flying about.

They were as beautiful as the rest of the planet, excluding the spider thing, anyway. They weren't really butterflies, having a much thicker body, and doubled wings, but the range of colors across those wings put the flowers to shame.

Rodney was actually impressed, and by a bug at that. "Wow."

"Yeah. Wow. This place is like one of those Buena Vista films they used to show us when gym class got rained out."

Rodney had no idea what he was talking about, but he didn't really care either. "Just. Wow."

But Sheppard had already moved past the pretty and into the ugly, the hallmark of someone too used to dealing with death. "It's going to be Ow if they get much closer to that web."

More and more of the butterfly things were massing around the web, getting closer to what would probably be a gruesome death.

If asked, Rodney couldn't have really identified why he chose to go towards the web, trying to chase the butterflies off. It wasn't as if he even liked bugs. And it wasn't as if Sheppard had to be protected from the harsh facts of life, even if the look on his face made Rodney think of innocence lost. But that was another thing he was ignoring.

He stood at the precise distance from the web that he thought was close enough to scare off the butterflies and far enough to protect himself from the spider, but he could have stayed where he'd been for all the attention he was paid. Instead the butterflies continued to mass, hundreds of them, brightly colored moths drawn to the spider's dark flame.

The spider was moving , scuttling along the web, legs moving in an agitated fashion, obviously eager for his dinner.

"No, go away little butterfly things. Webs with big ugly spider things are a bad idea."

Sheppard was beside him, face lit with amusement, probably at Rodney's expense. "Rodney, do you want me to scare the itty-bitty little butterfly things away from the big, bad spider for you?"

The particularly scathing retort that Rodney had on his lips died as the swarming mass of butterflies moved in on the spider, their actions coordinated like a fighter jet squadron. Or like some bizarre Olympic event, synchronized suicide.

It turned out to be more like synchronized homicide. As they approached the spider, the butterfly things extended a long, needle-like appendage near the tip of their bodies, which they then drove straight into the struggling spider.

Rodney stared for a moment as his mind reordered what it had just seen. The spider nervous, not eager. The butterflies predators, not prey.

The spider a liquid lunch, drips of things Rodney had rather not think about suspended in the web, dark and shiny pearls on a gossamer necklace.

Sheppard broke the moment with typical aplomb. "Ew. And wow, now it really is like a nature specials. I keep thinking Marlon's going to send Jim in any time now."

They watched for a moment in horrified fascination as the butterflies made short work of the spider. Rodney couldn't look away, even though he really wanted to.

He heard Sheppard take a sharp breath, his voice tight, almost panicked, as he called Rodney's name, and Rodney was finally able to break out of the spell, to drag his eyes away from the carnage.

He wanted to laugh at the look on Sheppard's face; something like a cross between "Eureka!' and "Oh, Shit!" But before he could, Sheppard actually said, "Oh, shit," and grabbed Rodney's arm, dragging him along in a flat out run.

Rodney managed to get enough breath to yell, "What exactly do you think you're doing?" but instead of Sheppard answering him, the butterflies did. Before they'd even managed to get out of the clearing, the butterflies were around them, attacking like some Danaidaic version of Hitchcock's The Birds.

Waving his arms, Rodney tried to knock them away, but that just gave the little, literally, bloodsuckers a target to aim for. The individual stings weren't too bad in and of themselves, but Rodney cried out as the pain from tens, maybe hundreds, of bites overwhelmed him.

He threw his arms in front of his face, trying to protect his eyes, as the attack on his body continued, and he could feel blood trickling out from all over.

He heard Sheppard yelling, and dropped his arms to check on him, only to see the colonel grab one of the insects, ignoring the bites, and slamming it against a nearby tree. The slap was muted by the flesh beneath it, but Rodney could see the blue, the beautiful, iridescent blue, that streamed down the tree, down Sheppard's hand, mixing with the deep red already there.

Always a quick study, Rodney was slamming the butterflies into any hard surface he could find, shouting out a weird mix of war cry and pain, all of it mixing with the sharp cracks and the stream of profanity coming from Sheppard's direction.

It was only minutes, though it felt like hours, before the butterfly things' survival instinct kicked in, leaving Rodney and Sheppard alone in the clearing with the tattered remains of the spider and covered in splatters of blue and red.

Rodney glanced around, making sure there were no other insidious bits of wildlife sneaking up on them, but they were alone. Then he checked, as best he could, the numerous tiny cuts that covered his body. Seeing the purple mix of blue and red blood, he sighed, followed by a quick "Ow." Carson was definitely going to keep them in the infirmary now.

But it was better than being eaten alive by a bunch of Monarchs.

He turned back to Sheppard, to ask him how he was doing, but he had his answer before he could ask.

Sheppard was on his knees; black and blue, red and purple, surrounded by green. His face was pale, his eyes trained on his hands, on the last butterfly there. Pressed flat for display, not by glass, but by need.

His voice was soft, shaky. "It was just supposed to be a lark. Go out and see the pretty planet."

He looked up at Rodney, eyes dark, intent. "But it's never just fun, is it? It's like death's following us around. Following me around."

Rodney shook his head. This was too serious. He needed Sheppard to make a joke, to make yet another near-death experience seem like nothing.

But too many people had needed that of Sheppard, had needed the deflections and smiles to hide the damage underneath. Rodney had bought into the whole ignore the man behind the curtain routine, like everyone else in Atlantis, knowing it was false, but needing it all the same. But the illusion was cracking, and Rodney wasn't sure what to do.

Sheppard traced a finger along the jeweled wings in his hand. His voice held that odd lilt that people used when they recited poetry when he said, "Death is not the worst. Rather in vain to wish for death, and not to compass it."

Rodney didn't recognize the allusion, didn't want to. Didn't want Sheppard's mind going any further along that path. He'd always thought that martyrs shouldn't be allowed to read poetry.

He needed to break Sheppard out of this, to give him a chance to bandage over things that could be dealt with later. Later when they weren't on the Planet of Doom. He racked his brain trying to come up with a counter quote, something deep and meaningful that would put everything into perspective, but the only things he'd ever really bothered to memorize were math and science theorems, which probably wouldn't be all that helpful in this situation.

But then Rodney had never met anyone more relevant than himself, anyway, so he'd just go with what he felt. "Death is the worst. Especially painful, miserable death involving insects, which serve absolutely no purpose. Not that I'm willing to acknowledge, anyway."

Green and blue and brown, with a touch of laughter, as Sheppard looked up. "Who said that?"

"I did. Now let's get out of here, before the others come looking for us."

And slowly, the pieces holding together even if the seams were showing, Sheppard stood up and followed Rodney's lead.

Not wanting to hear it echo between them, Rodney talked over the silence. "You know that Carson's going to use us in some bizarre voodoo ritual instead of just letting us take a shower like a normal person would."

The smile grew stronger, glue filling up the cracks.

"And I'm leaving it to you to explain to Elizabeth what the heck we were doing that we got attacked by butterflies anyway."

Now that they had a destination, they were moving faster, but not so fast that Rodney couldn't hear Sheppard's whispered, "We never did name it."

"I'm voting for Lepidopterist's Nightmare. What do you think?"

The smirk was there, seamless, as Sheppard caught up to him, walking close, their shoulders brushing from time to time. "Better than Eden."

/story


End file.
